One of these days
by Ratchets Girl
Summary: The ocean. The sun. Some bad pirate hunters. A kidnapping. Seastone. His family. The phoenix sighted. It was going to be one of these days.


English is not my native language so I apologize in advance for any mistakes

(please tell me if I made **any** embarrassing mistakes)

So I´m kinda adoring Marco? There are simply not enough stories about him, at least not with him as the main character.

 **I own nothing but the plot.**

 **Disclaimer: swearing, torture, violence, a lot of violence? Someone being force-fed (** is that even a word or a warning?) I seriously have no medical knowledge beyond simple first aid. So if I offend someone with my unknowledge (is that even a word?) I apologize.

 **I´d love any comment** (as long as it´s not meant to be simply insulting) and if you got a few good ideas I'd especially love to hear them…

So here it goes:

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The sun was rising making everything it shone upon gleam in a holy way. The Moby Dick was lying calm in the sea still peaceful from the previous night. The only ones awake were the ones who had the night watch as well as a certain phoenix who sat on the highest mast staring at the beautiful sunrise.

The blond sighed, looking down on the still quiet deck. He was still tired from finishing his paperwork from yesterday. He only finished it an hour ago and flew up here to have a few relaxing minutes. A faint smile appeared on his face when he thought about his brothers and sisters who were still resting peacefully. He sighted again, transformed his arms into wings, and gently flew down from his high up spot. Heading to his room he walked through the wooden corridors of the Moby. Only two of his brothers crossed his way both still half asleep. Reaching his room he took a quick shower. After that he went back to his desk wanting to get a head start on today's paperwork. A few hours later a knock startled him out of his thoughts and he told whoever it was to enter. Thatch walked inside, stopped and simply stared at his blond brother.

"Good morning, yoi" Marco greeted his friend, after a short moment of simply staring at him. He hadn't expected Thatch, since the cheerful man usually would start cooking even before sunrise so breakfast would be finished by the time everyone else would wake.

This seemed to snap his red haired brother out of the trance he had been in. "Morning" Thatch said, "You know what would make this morning reeeeaally good?" Marco simply raised an eyebrow in question to this odd question. "The morning would be really good if a certain man with a pineapple like hairstyle would remember to eat and that is, by the way, the reason why I had to go aaaall the way from the kitchen to your room!" This was accompanied by a pointed stare. Marco sighted. He forgot that he missed both lunch and dinner yesterday. Thatch was quite particular about that no one on the Moby Dick is allowed to miss a meal without very good reason. "It´s not like I can starve anyway, yoi." Thatch´s stare hardened and a frown overtook his usually cheery face. "That's not the point and you know it! And while you cannot starve with that devil fruit of yours, it is still important to eat!" It was an old argument between them. But he knew better than to start an argument with a cook about the importance of eating. "Fine, yoi. Let´s go." He simply said and started walking into the direction of the mess. Arriving there they found it already half full and still filling. They headed to the table where the other commanders were already stuffing their face´s with food. Haruta sat on one side of the table talking excitedly with Vista. Izou wearing a stunning red Kimono ate as usual with much more grace than his other brothers. They sat down at the table receiving smiles and nods from the ones who noticed them.

After finishing his meal under Thatch´s watchful gaze, Marco went back to his paperwork, trying to manage this whole bunch of crazies he called his family.

.

A few hours later only a few pages were left. Marco decided to stretch his leg a little bit while checking that no one had broken anything today. Someone like Haruta or Thatch. Scratch that, he only had to check because of Haruta and Thatch. His other brothers and sisters behaved much better and tended to break fewer things in a year that those troublemakers broke in a week. An exited yell reached his ears. A ship. Enemies. A fight. Something to do on a boring day, at least. _Well something like that anyway_. Marco sighted annoyed but headed in the direction of the exited voices of his siblings anyway. And from then it went all to hell.

In the end bad things often happen by coincidence. Sure there are those bad guys with their really evil plan from your first meeting until the time they will kill you slowly and painfully and rule the world and bla bla bla…. But if you really look at it a lot of bad things happen by chance. You get sick and die slowly. A badly shot bullet hits you even if it´s not meant for you. You get knocked down the ship and fall into the water and drown. Well there are a lot of stupid bad things that can happen to you and let´s face it, it sucks big time.

In hindsight he should have taken the enemy more serious even if they only got him by pure coincidence. And additionally to that he really needed to punch Thatch in the face.

He got caught by pirate-hunters. Bad pirate-hunters. Really bad pirate-hunters who probably never caught someone with a bounty over 10 000 barry´s. _This is embarrassing._

After Marco had reached his brothers they had awaited the enemy ship. It had turned out that they were pirate-hunters who were after Oyajis bounty. Not like it was an unusual occurrence that some no-names would pop up to talk a bit nonsense until they got beaten up by the bored members of the Moby Dick. So after they had beaten a few of these idiots into the ground someone managed to hit a mast of the Moby Dick. And the mast fell. And while he usually had a lot of trust in the observation skill of his fellow commanders, Thatch hadn't even looked at the mast. Nope THATCH had traded bad jokes with Haruta. And so Marco took it upon himself to push Thatch away from the mast. And the mast knocked Marco into the air. Normally that wouldn't have been a problem at all since it has been long since he perfected his transforming at last second. But with his luck he didn't get knocked over the water but more or less straight into a seastone net the idiotic pirate-hunters had thrown right before he was knocked from the ship. All in all it was Thatch´s fault.

So the idiocy of his brother led to him being chained in seastone cuffs to a wall in a very small cell. And it had been such a nice and calm day…

He didn't even bother to look up when the sound of steps came closer to his cell. A hand gripped his hair yanking it forcing him to look up. The pirate-hunter was big, burly, scarred and simply put ugly as sin with a huge nose, a small mouth and red filthy hair "Well if that isn't a surprise! The first commander himself what an honour." Laughter was heard from another pirate-hunter behind him. "Nothing to say? Well it doesn't matter anyway. We simply keep you under until we reach the marines tomorrow and get your nice bounty."

This little monologue was accompanied by a greedy grin on the ugly face of the pirate hunter. Not that he would still be here tomorrow. His brothers were probably near waiting for a good moment until they could get him out without risking anything. Like they would usually do if one of their family got captured. Not that it happened often. Especially not by bad pirate-hunters… again: this was simply embarrassing. Marco sighted annoyed. "Are we boring you?" the ugly pirate-hunter captain sneered. "Well we can´t have that." He looked at an equally ugly crew-member with a green hat. "Give him the powder. The cuffs don't seem to bother him at all. Let´s entertain him a bit." He said with an unpleasant grin on his face, letting Marcos hair go and left. This made Marco narrow his eyes. _What powder, yoi?_ He again cursed Thatch for putting him into this situation. Another laugh was heard from the green hat. This time it sounded exited. The ugly green hat had taken a small chest from somewhere only god knows. He was mixing the grey substance in there into a bowl of water. Marcos eyes followed suspicious every direction green-hat made. Suddenly ugly-green-hat was in front of him forcing his mouth open. _No way, yoi!_ Marco fought his head free but he couldn't move much since he was still chained to the wall. Additional to that the seastone cuffs had taken their toll and his movements were far from his usually strong ones. The green hat managed to grip his hair like his crew-member and yank his head into his neck. Pressing his lips firmly together he glared at the other man. Suddenly there was another pair of hands holding his nose closed while trying to pry his mouth open. Another pirate-hunter must have entered the room while Marco was resisting green-hat. Suddenly oxygen deprived he tried to keep his mouth shut but after a few minutes he couldn't hold his breath anymore and gasped for air. Sure enough the pirate-hunters used this opportunity to force-feed him the water with the strange powder. As soon as the first drop of the laced water hit his stomach the fight bled out of his body. It felt like someone was stabbing his insides with a thousand tiny knifes and all his body-parts had turned into lead. A wave of dizziness overcame him and his sight was a complete blur of colours. In a distant part of his brain he realized that they were still feeding him the water with powder. No they were simply feeding him the powder and washed it down with a bit of water. And he couldn't move. Couldn't fight back. For the first time in years he felt afraid. He was helpless.

Then the pain started. He didn't know who started it but soon kicks and punches were raining upon him. A crack and his arm was broken. He couldn't move. He lost any sense of time. Then someone brought out the knives. It was excruciating. Marco floated in a sea of pain. He didn't even knew what part of his body hurt so much. He couldn't even concentrate on not telling them anything. They didn't want to know. There were no questions. Just agony. Their laughter rung in his ear. He knew he was bleeding losing blood at an alarming rate.

He couldn't move. He blacked out.

.

When Thatch got pushed away from a falling mast he hadn't noticed and saw Marco falling into the seastone-net his only thoughts were about how mad his brother was going to be. His next thought was: _Shit…._ He wasn't the only one who had noticed what had happened and the attacks of his brothers focused on the pirate-hunters who were pulling the net with Marco onto the ship. He could see his brother struggle weakly but even though Marco could overpower anyone on the ship but Oyaji (and sometimes he wasn't even sure about that since he had never seen those two fight against each other) the seastone sapped his strength from his body making it easy for those bastards to press him down and hold a gun against his head. And the all members of the Moby Dick froze. The pirate-hunters who were already retreating before the mast fell had reached their ship and were surrounding Marco. His brothers and sisters were staring with horror at the situation. One of the pirate-hunters called a warning. If you come close he´ll die. Usually they´d have laughed about it. Marco couldn't die. His devil fruit would not let him. But they´d never seen Marco caught in seastone before. If the pirate-hunter would shoot even his devil fruit could not save Marco. So they didn't come closer. They watched how the pirate-hunters quickly set sail and the ship holding one of his brothers moved away from the Moby Dick.

Anger coursed through the Whitebeard pirates. _How dare they?_ Heavy steps sounded from the deck. The comforting presence of their captain had arrived after hearing the angry calls for Marco. Usually he wouldn't even bother to join them for such an unimportant fight. Their father looked at the retreating ship with narrowed eyes. It wouldn´t be long until Marco would be back in the comfort of his family. And if those pirate-hunters had dared to hurt him they would not know what hit them.

.

When they came for Marco it was in the typical way of the Whitebeard pirates. Loud. Chaotic. And with the goal to protect their family. They found their brother hanging limp in chains from the wall. He was white as a sheet breathing short and ragged sounding breaths. The rest of the skin which was not white was blue and black. Red streaks were all over his body. A puddle of red underneath him. They unchained him and carried him onto the safety of their own ship. It was only when their brother was safe and cared for that they unleashed the fury from seeing their first commander and brother unmoving and pale and beaten. When they left the ship it was burning and no pirate-hunter was left alive.

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Two days later Izo sat on a chair next to the infirmary bed Marco was lying in. An expression of concern on his face. The phoenix was asleep. White bandages hiding his injuries. This situation was not normal. Marco was not supposed to lie there. Especially not because of some pirate-hunters. The nurses had found seastone powder in his system. They had force-fed it to him and it was then absorbed into his blood stream. The wounds littering his body were not able to heal like this. The nurses had cleaned them to the best of their abilities. The death of those pirate-hunters had not been nearly painful enough. And now Marco was lying there with unnatural paleness and not enough strength to breathe normally. But Mina the head nurse had reassured them that he would be up again soon. The injuries were not life threatening. A broken arm and a few deeper cuts were the worst of it. While the seastone would take a week or two to flush completely out of his system, there would be no lasting effects. And as soon as the seastone was gone, Marcos phoenix powers would take care of any damage. But until Marco was back to his usual strength, Izo would try to stay a little bit closer to his brother than usual. He was sure the rest of his family felt the same way.

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Marco felt like crap. Pretty much everything felt heavy. The dizziness and nauseousness didn't help at all. He slowly tried to open his eyes. He was pretty sure that his brothers had already come for him since he was lying on a bed covered with soft blankets. After a few seconds the burr in front of his eyes cleared and he recognized the infirmary of the Moby Dick. A soft hand on his cheek made his eyes slowly flicker to his right. A red mouth, pale nearly white skin and soft brown eyes told him that it was Izou who was sitting next to his bed. "Marco? Hey there. You had us worried." Marco managed a small smile. "Mina said that you won´t be able to move for the first few days." Izou smiled at him. "No worries. We have everything under control." Izou continued talking about the ongoing´s on the ship. He listened to the gentle and calming voice of his brother while drifting and slipping into a peaceful sleep.

.

The next time the darkness faded another person sat next to him. Surrounded by a distinct smell of many spices and that one smell he could never really place that person was definitely Thatch. A calloused hand was holding his own tightly in it grasp. He was safe. He succumbed to the darkness again.

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Voices. There were voices talking. He was warm and comfortable. He didn't want to move. But those voice wouldn't shut up. He sighted. Laugher. _Gurararara._ The voices stopped. _Yay_.

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Orange. Why in the world was the ceiling orange? Did the nurses simply have no taste? The other walls of the infirmary are white. Why is the ceiling orange?! Marco sighted. They had him on the good drugs. Mina shot him an amused look. And Curiel who was sitting in a chair next to his bed simply kept snoring.

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Marco walked over the deck of the Moby. His arm was securely held in a sling. Most of his bruises had already started to heal just as some of the cuts. You've got to love healing abilities even if they are reduced by the rest of seastone powder.

He stood next to pops chair smiling up at him. A loving gaze was his reply. Loud voices made everyone look at Haruta and Thatch who burst through the door onto the deck and were chasing each other around now. Izo was following them in a much more sedated pace looking annoyed. Rakuyo and Namur were sitting at the railing playing a game of poker. Marco sighted.

It was a nice day.

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Ok I know this story does not really make sense.

This is my first try at something more violent. And at something with Marco. (I head-cannon him as someone who would be pretty annoyed at being captured)

I actually just wanted to write a story where Marco suffered for a bit (got to love a hurt phoenix) and his family being around him while he heals.

Hope you liked it anyway.

Please leave a comment


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